{339} (cont’d)

C) The oneness of Christianity “and” the other religions. All of this is not some type of juggling to make the characteristic of “and” disappear, which clearly involves a distinction between Christianity, and the other religions. From the particular sense of this “and” the ultimate sense of the history of religions depends. What is this “and”?

Negatively considered, the “and” is not an “and” of mere coexistence. That is completely false. It is not the case that there is Buddhism, and Brahmanism, and Islam, and Judaism, and Christianity. It is not an “and” of mere coexistence, but an “and” of presence¹. Christianity is not juxtaposed on the other religions. It is different from them, but while different from them, it is present in all of them. It is an “and” of presence in all the other religions. This does not become an impediment for the existence of a difference between all the other religions and Christianity, but the difference is not that of a copula. That would be as absurd as to pretend —if we return to the old Platonic dialectic concerning {340} the idea of man— that given the unquestionable fact that humanity is not to be confused with Socrates or Aristides, it is not something juxtaposed to Socrates and Aristides. Christianity is a different religion, but it is not added to the other religions. At least not in that form. The “and” is not an “and” of coexistence, but an “and” of interjacency. And this interjacency is a strictly and formally historical interjacency. Precisely because it is the case of a presence in the depth of every religion, there is always the radical possibility that each religion, in its own way, and in its own time may be able to receive a greater illumination from Christianity.

Then, What does Christianity as Christianity do when facing the other religions?². If what I have just said is true, one thing becomes clear: the attitude of Christianity when facing the other religions can never be that of an excluding affirmation. Absolutely not. That would be chimerical, and in addition without fundament. It may have happened several times in the course of history, but always in an irregular manner and contrary to the very essence of Christianity. Let us remember that while Europe was sending crusades to expel Moslems from the Holy Places, the Christian theologians were taking from Islamic writers³ the conceptual framework with which to elaborate their own theology. The index of El justo medio en la creencia (“The Precise Balance in Faith”) of Al-Gazzali (Algazel,1058-1111), translated by my admired professor and dear friend Miguel Asín Palacios, is an index that can be found in any manual of Dogmatic Theology⁴. The attitude of Christianity cannot be {341} an attitude of excluding affirmation, but —quite the opposite— an attitude of positive turning towards them. This turning attitude is what thematically and formally should be called mission. What do we understand here by mission? Two possibilities —in history we always find the interplay of possibilities. One possibility is to believe that the mission consists in converting everyone else. Saint Paul and Christ himself speak of metánoia, of conversion. But it is a conversion to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; an interior conversion, individual. It is not enough to fulfill the Law if there is no heartfelt conversion. We are dealing here with something else. We are dealing, for example, with making Christians out of Buddhists. This attitude of conversion is something that Christianity certainly has to attempt, but knowing full well it will never happen. It is an attitude, which cannot succeed. Experience, on the one hand, and in addition the intrinsic problematics of the case, make of this attitude that Christianity has to incorporate, something intrinsically fallible.

Nevertheless, the attitude of Christianity before the other religions cannot be a fallible and defeatable attitude. It has to be an intrinsically unbeatable one. The attitude, which constitutes the mission of Christianity does not consist primarily in obtaining the conversion, as if not obtaining it were a sign of failure. It consists of something else, of the attitude, which Christ manifested before Pilate when He said: “My kingdom does not belong to this world... Anyone committed to the truth hears my voice”. “Truth!” said Pilate, {342} “What does that mean?” (Jn 18:36-38). Probably the other religions will shrug their shoulders, just as Pilate did, which did not deter Christ from saying: “The reason I was born, the reason why I came into the world: hína martyréso te aletheía, is to testify to the truth” (Jn 18:37). This is the unbeatable attitude of the Church: to be precisely the one to testify to the truth, not only before all the other religions, but in the depth of all of them. That is to say, it is an attitude of salvation towards all of them. How is this possible?

Everything depends on what is understood by to testify. The Greek term for “to testify” is martýrion, which is the origin of our word “martyr”⁵. However, even this term has had problems. It is commonly assumed that a martyr is one who has given his life for a certain truth, in this case, for a religious truth. Quite so. But this is not the radical sense of martyrdom at all. Let us remember the protomartyr St. Stephen. There is no doubt he was stoned to death. Still, he was not a martyr because of that fact. Just the opposite: he was killed because he was a martyr, because he testified to the truth. The loss of his life followed his testimony of the truth, and was not formally a constituent of the martyrdom. The supreme case is the cross of Christ. Christ is the martyr par excellance not because He was nailed to a cross, but because nailed to a cross He gives testimony to all men of His own Redeeming Divinity, which is quite a different thing. This {343} attitude of giving testimony before all the other religions is, if you prefer, an attitude of conversion, but through elevation. Without repudiation. It is an attitude for the salvation of all the other religions.

1) This attitude involves, in the first place, what I call a historical presentiality (Sp. presencialidad histórica) of the truth. Precisely because Christ not only preaches truth, but is personally the truth, Christianity will never give testimony of the truth to all the other religions only with what it says, but also with what it is, i.e., it is a historical presentiality. The theological or doctrinal presentiality is not enough. Indeed, the theological presentiality is first and above all the presentiality of something, which occurs, and not simply of something that is enunciated⁶.

2) In the second place, it is a presentiality not just historical, but a presentiality as freedom of option. To the testimonial presence of Christianity in history there corresponds from the side of the one receiving —and in this case all the other religions on Earth— an attitude of intrinsic freedom. Saint Paul said that faith is a rationale obsequium⁷, a reasonable acquiescence. Christianity prefers the reasonable rather than remaining solitary, and chooses not to remain aloof. Facing the other religions by expelling them from its own body; it would experience the pain of seeing they do not believe in it. This way, Christianity will continue to be together with the other religions as the truth intrinsically immanent to all of them⁸.

{344} 3) In the third place, it is not just a historical presentiality, and a historical presentiality of freedom of option, but in addition it is a dynamic presentiality. As St. Paul says: “Yes, Jews demand “signs” and Greeks look for “wisdom”, but we preach Christ crucified... Theoú dýnamis kai Theoú sofía, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor 1:22-24). The dýnamis of God. What does dýnamis mean there? Dýnamis does not simply and purely mean a potency, in the Greek sense of the term. Not at all. It does not mean it has a dynamism, as we say today. Dýnamis has a different sense, which can be questioned. From my point of view it means precisely the idea of power. Not the idea of a force, but the idea of power. This is precisely the power, which Christian truth has when facing other religions. And the dýnamis toú Theoú, in this sense, is precisely the power of God. It is the case of a characteristic of power and not simply of potency. Power is closer to history than potency, which is usually understood —in the Greek sense— as a metaphysical attribute of divinity, as if metaphysics has to place history beyond its margin.

Therefore, it is a dynamic presentiality. And this dynamic presentiality incorporates three concrete characteristics.

a) In the first place, it is a dynamic presentiality whose power is manifested precisely by making kadósh, hágios, holy, the one who has it. Quite true, the dynamic presentiality of Christian truth is not the presentiality of a knowledge. The verb yada’, in Hebrew and Aramaic, means to know, but to know in the sense of being intimate with something, for example, with an illness, with a sorrow or with a woman who is loved. That is to know in reality, and not simply having a theoretic and merely speculative knowledge. As the Semite understood it, truth makes man truthful. {345} It is a sanctifying presentiality. After all, it is the very prayer, which Christ uttered over His Apostles, moments before His capture in Gethsemani, and, which must be applied to the entire history of religions: hagíason aútoús en te aletheía, “sanctify them in the truth” (Jn 17:17). To sanctify them is to put in operation the dynamic power of truth insofar as it is that, which forms the spirit of man. The truth of Christ is not a purely metaphysical truth, but is the metaphysical reality of the truth of God.

b) The power of this testimony is not only a sanctifying power, it is also a power of perenniality. At one time sanctity was proposed as a note of the Church without affirming that the Church is holy because its members are holy. This misses the mark entirely. That is not the point at all. The actual case is a more modest reality, although more mysterious and profound: there shall never be a lack of someone upon Earth that is in the state of sanctifying grace. Then, we shall have to say —conversely— that the presence of just one soul in the state of sanctifying grace brings upon Earth more goodness than all the accumulated evils the whole history of mankind may have accumulated. We are dealing with a perennial presentiality. Christ promised it: “And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). Christian truth will always continue to conquer souls. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the world will become progressively Christian. Just the opposite. Probably St. John’s Apocalypse opens the door to us for a different way: it is not the case of a triumphal stepping march of Christianity, perhaps long and arduous, but definitely accomplished, at the end of which the world will have become formally Christian qua world⁹. This is not promised anywhere. {346} Probably the deepest vision of the Apocalypse is precisely the opposite: the world will not become Christian; there will be many Christians, but just at the margin of the world, which as such will not be Christian. What will happen to the world is what happened to Christ: He died on the cross. A world, which will not be Christian. There will be many Christians, but only at the margin of their world. That is the way Christ will be with us until the end of the world (Mt 28:20). Christianity does not act on our spirits only through the triumphal existence of an objective body within a society politically organized. Quite the reverse: Christianity acts through depth.

c) In the third place, it is a presence, not only sanctifying and perennial, but also an expectant presentiality. In an éschaton, in an ultimateness, is how Christianity is present in all of the other religions. Christian truth is present in all the other religions as the expectation of something, which aims towards a trans-historical moment. This is the expectation for the moment in which the truth of God and Christianity is established, not upon Earth, but before all mankind, in a trans-historical way¹⁰.

Consequently, with this triple presentiality, with that attitude of sanctifying, perennial, and expectant presence, the history of {347} religions acquires a most concrete characteristic. As I mentioned in the previous chapters, the history of religions is essentially the inchoative actualization, and later appropriated, of one of the three ways, which are open to religion in its ascent towards the divinity. History is, in religion, religion in act. Therefore, since Christianity is revealed, we find on the one hand that, in the history of revelation, history is for Christianity the very revelation in act¹¹. And the history of religions, which is our concern here, is the historical diversity of the possibilities, which humanity has had of objectively being really and actually Christian¹².

In the end, it comes down to what I have expressed many times by saying that the history of religions is the real and actual heartbeat of divinity in the depths of the human spirit. It is a buried presence of the divinity, but truly a dynamic, real and actual presence in the depths of the human spirit. It is the root, structure, and destiny of the history of religions. To understand that this history is the pure and formal heartbeat of the divinity in the depths of the human spirit, independently of what this heartbeat may be for Christianity —namely, a revelation— is, from my point of view, in what the philosophical problem of the history of religions consists.

________________
¹ Zubiri attaches a card with a note that reads: “Here: the theology of history; about the historical oneness of religions: the unitary theology of religion, from the point of view of God:
1) Variety of religions —towards monotheism.
2) Monotheism —towards Christ.
3) Christ towards the éschaton.
² Zubiri said in the 1965 Madrid seminar: “This mode of presence is not simply the act with which Christianity really exists upon Earth, but is something more subtle, and even more profound in a certain way. It is the transfusion of its intrinsic truth as act; it is an attitude. It is a problem of attitude.”
³ [Tr. note: Medieval Islamic writers from Persia (Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel) and Spain (Avempace, Abubacer, Averroes) were using neo-Platonic and Aristotelian Greek philosophy from texts not yet known in Europe]
⁴ This refers to his book al-Iqtisad fi ’l-i ’tiqad, translated into Spanish by M. Asín Palacios, El justo medio en la creencia. Compendio de teología dogmática de Algacel (“The Even Balance of Faith. Manual of Dogmatic Theology by Al-Ghazzali”), Madrid, 1929.
⁵ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri pointed out that the Greek term “exactly translates the Hebrew term ’ed. This term has two semantic dimensions. On the one hand it signifies a witness by presence. On the other, it means the personal testimony of a conviction. These two aspects of the question were fused initially and radically in the very person of Christ, who was not only witness to the presence of the divinity —since He was God—, but in addition, in His own revelation, testified about the truth of His divine filiation and the truth of God.”
⁶ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri concluded that the testimony of Christianity as presential on Earth consists in “being the historical testimony of truth. Not only saying it, but being it (‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life’, cf. Jn 14:6). Hence the dialog.”
⁷ According to the Latin Vulgate translation in Rom 12:1.
⁸ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri added: “The testimonial presence of Christianity is a testimonial presence in freedom”.
⁹ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri points to his concept of world as “The set of current principles in which society exists. Current, not in a pejorative sense, but in the sense of the principles that are found there, thought about, believed, and constituting the force moving that world”.
¹⁰ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri pointed out: “Testimony is the historical presence of truth in the history of religions. And this presence testifying to a dýnamis is the force of the final manifestation of Christian truth. It will be a presence of the very truth in a super-testimonial way: a manifestation of the truth of the history of religions (...) And, actually, this presence is what the Greeks called parousía. This is precisely what Christianity always expected since the preaching of Christ. No longer martýrion, but parousía”.
¹¹ Zubiri writes on the margin “careful”. In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri had said: “Theologically, the history of religions is for Christianity the revelation in act of Christianity”.
¹² The next paragraph is taken from the 1965 Madrid seminar.